Medals for Services at Sea from the Collection of the Late Oliver Stirling Lee

South Atlantic 1982, with rosette (Ck. R. T. E. Wilkinson, D176706B, H.M.S. Endurance) minor official correction to number/ship, good very fine and rare £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals for Services at Sea from the Collection of the Late Oliver Stirling Lee.

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For the full story of the Endurance’s significant role in the South Atlantic campaign, see the memoirs of her charismatic and outspoken skipper, the late Captain Nick Barker, R.N., entitled Beyond Endurance: An Epic of Whitehall and the South Atlantic; see, too, his detailed obituary in the Daily Telegraph, and Roger Perkins’ definitive history Operation Paraquat.

As the ‘sole regular bearer of the White Ensign south of the Equator’, the Endurance represented the only visible trace of British interests in the Falkland Islands being taken seriously, so when news was received that she was to be withdrawn and scrapped, Captain Barker took up the offensive with Whitehall. Fortuitously for British interests, he won a reprieve, and, as a consequence, his ship and his crew were able to play a crucial part in the capture of South Georgia and at the retaking of the outlying dependency of South Thule, and in an associated S.B.S. operation.

Barker, ‘who had a swashbuckling disregard of rules and regulations which was bound to annoy bureaucrats’, paid a heavy price for his intuitive and determined intervention into the world of diplomacy and politics, any promise of flag rank being effectively curtailed before the War even started. Equally upsetting was the fact that his C.B.E. was not announced until the October following the main Falklands Honours List, but by then his respect for such accolades had clearly dwindled. As he later remarked, on hearing that a formal Falklands inquiry was to be established, “Most of those who might be found culpable [for the invasion having taken place] have been knighted, promoted or decorated - or all three.”